Pew Official Disputes Right-Wing Claim That Poll Proves Obama Is “Polarizing”
The fellow who oversees Pew Research’s political polling is disputing the claim, made by some on the right today, that the much-discussed new Pew poll showing a stark partisan divide in Obama’s approval rating proves that Obama is a “polarizing” President.
“It’s unfair to say that Obama has caused this divisiveness or to say that he is a polarizing president,” Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director, told me in an interview just now.
Many on the right have grabbed on to the Pew poll’s finding that Obama’s approval rating has a 61-point partisan gap — 27% of Republicans approve, while 88% of Dems do. Pew called the numbers “the most polarized” in decades but didn’t blame Obama.
Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner pointed to the numbers to slam Obama as the “most polarizing” President in decades and to blast Obama’s promise of bipartisanship as “fictional.” Drudge branded Obama “President Polarize,” and many others on the right echoed the charge.
Pew associate director Dimock, however, says this is a misreading of the poll. Dimock says the divide is driven by long term trends and by the uncommonly enthusiastic reaction to Obama by members of his own party — by what he calls “the way Democrats are reacting to Obama.”
Interestingly, Dimock also said this phenomenon is partly caused by the recent tendency of Republicans to be less charitable towards new Presidents than Dems have been.
In contrast to the 27% of GOPers approving of Obama now, more than a third of Dems (36%) approved of George W. Bush at a comparable time in 2001. Before that, only 26% of Republicans approved of Bill Clinton at the same time in his presidency, while 41% of Dems approved of both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan at comparable times.
Dimock, who said that the sheer scale of Obama’s agenda could be hurting Obama among GOPers, claimed that the willingness to give the incoming President the benefit of the doubt hasn’t been “as prevalent among Republicans.”
As they say, Developing…
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If I am reading Pew correctly you could basically make the point that President Obama is more popular with Republicans than Bill Clinton was and his Presidency was pretty d@mned good if you ask me.
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But lets talk turkey about the real issue. Bill Clinton came to office at a time where registered Republicans outnumbered registered Dems BY FAR. Those numbers aren’t the same anymore so many of those in the middle, you know the people that give him a 57% approval ratings, used to be registered Republicans and would have helped bring that number up. Thats why extrapolating from polls without taking into account the independents is absolutely ridiculous. Dems like him, Republicans don’t who would have figured? But the fact that independents like him a lot is the REAL story.
yeah, Indys are key. I thought the Pew official’s point about Republicans being less willing to give incoming Presidents of the other party the benefit of the doubt was particularly interesting…
Also, as Nate Silver points out, the percentage of respondents who identify themselves as Republican has reached an all-time low (24%).
Basically, what this poll really shows is that the Republican party is rapidly becoming a “rump” of Obama haters.
The Republicans are spoiled brats who can’t deal when their toys get taken away.
Let me take this opportunity to point out that Obama never promised “bipartisanship” — that was a fiction of the GOP and the Beltway media, who believe that a mushy-middle compromise between wherever we are now and where an increasingly right-wing Republican Party wants us to be is the ideal. In fact, Obama promised only to “change the tone” (which polls show he has done), listen to good ideas from anywhere on the political spectrum, and invite people of every stripe to join in taking the country in a positive direction.
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As long as national Republicans cling stubbornly to ideas that have proven disastrously bad over the past eight years or more (when they are proposing ideas at all), it is entirely consistent with those promises to exclude their proposals entirely.
Greg, good work getting behind the numbers to their actual significance. And it’s certainly necessary to recognize the significance of the decreasing number of Republicans for any of these polls.
the once proud republican party, the party of lincoln, t. roosevelt, and eisenhower, has descended into a loon circus dominated by its leading lights, limbaugh, hannity, beck, coulter, rowe, gingrich, delay, boehner…(well, by now you get my point). in other words, i couldn’t be happier if the g.o.p. disapproval rate of obama was 100%-it’d be a mark of honor.
It has only been in the last decade that conservative voices have commandeered the radio talk show airwaves with their hour by hour attack. They appeal to the form of human nature which wants to blame someone for what’s happening to them – and conservatives have a ready answer. It is called “scapegoating”.